Israel forces spurn fiery barricades

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ISRAELI forces have bypassed a burning barricade and marched
into one of the last inhabited Jewish settlements in occupied Gaza,
hoping to completely evacuate the biggest bloc of enclaves in the
area.

Confrontation loomed yesterday as several hundred young
radicals, reinforcing dozens of settler families that ignored last
week's army directive to leave the Gaza Strip, awaited troops sent
to remove them from a cluster of settlements.

Protesters set fire to bales of hay, tyres and wooden crates at
the main entrance to the settlement of Katif. Dozens of soldiers
ignored the barricade, which belched black smoke into the clear
summer sky, and entered through a nearby fence.

But Israel's evacuation of its Gaza settlements has touched off
a fierce Palestinian political campaign and its outcome may
determine whether Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas can succeed
in governing and eventually making peace.

Hamas and Mr Abbas' more secular faction, Fatah, are jostling
for position in municipal elections in coming months and
legislative elections planned for January 25, the first that Hamas
has said it would contest.

Mr Abbas is trying to contain Hamas within the Palestinian
political system and ultimately to take its weapons away. Hamas, a
far more disciplined, methodical movement than Fatah, wants to
strengthen its hold on Palestinian society.

Hamas had "a mission", said Ziad Abu Amr, a political scientist
and independent legislator who serves as a liaison between Abbas
and Hamas. "They want to Islamicise the state and society."

On Saturday the candidates vied again. In a speech in Gaza City,
Mr Abbas appropriated the language of Hamas for his peaceful
purpose of rebuilding Gaza, declaring, "The little jihad is over,
and now we have the bigger jihad  the bigger battle is
achieving security and economic growth."

At the same time, a few blocks away, Hamas gunmen in black masks
held a news conference. For them, the jihad was not little and not
over.

Into a bouquet of microphones, one of them praised "the choice
of jihad, which caused Israel's security theory to fail".

"We're going to keep our weapons, because the battle with the
enemy is a long one," he said.

Mr Abbas' aides still fear that Hamas will disrupt the
withdrawal or its aftermath, striking at Israel on its own or
through a proxy to provoke Israeli fire.

They say the motive would be to prevent Fatah, which dominates
the governing Palestinian Authority, from handling the withdrawal
smoothly and fairly, which would allow Fatah to shake the
reputation for corruption and mismanagement that it gained under
Yasser Arafat.

Hamas says it is not trying to supplant the Palestinian
Authority and represents the Palestinians' public interest.